Just fun and games? utilitarian and hedonic chatbot perceptions and their role for continuance intentions

Abstract

Conversational agents (CAs) offer huge potential for service companies by creating social closeness and enabling fast and scalable communication with customers. However, investigation of utilitarian and especially hedonic value as driving motivations for using CAs is still nascent. We found social presence to be an important predictor for hedonic and utilitarian value and subsequent continuance intention. Moreover, we reveal customers’ continuance intention is determined primarily by hedonic value when expecting a CA, whereas focus shifts to utilitarian values if customers expect a human employee. With our results, CA services can be better tailored to customer needs and company service goals.